Residents of manufactured housing parks typically own their homes – but not the parks themselves, which can be incredibly lucrative. Now some residents are forming cooperatives, and taking control
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As private owners work to maximize profit, Roc USA is fighting for a radical oppositional model: resident-owned communities, or Rocs. According to an industry analysis from 2019, the average annual rent increase in privately owned parks is 3.9%. In recent years, according to the Washington Post, some park residents have seen their rents rise much more rapidly, even doubling or tripling. According to a 2020 Roc USA analysis, the average annual rent increase in community-owned parks is just 0.9% – or $3 a year.
For the kinds of people who traditionally live in manufactured housing communities – retirees and low-income earners – the best chance to protect their housing is to take ownership of it themselves.
In February, the Biden administration announced the details of the Preservation and Reinvestment Initiative for Community Enhancement (Price) Act, which Congress passed in 2022 and mandates the creation of a $225m grant to improve manufactured housing infrastructure nationwide. The act, which Roc USA and members of its resident-owned communities lobbied for, marks the first time the federal government has laid out a funded program to support manufactured housing.
Mobile home co-ops make a ton of sense. Get rid of the landlord class and start having community owned properties everywhere.
its a great concept, but a corrupted HOA is likely. Open books would help.
This isn’t really an HOA, it’s a co-op that manages the properties, that’s pretty different from an HOA, because they need to actually do things, and not just nitpick yards.
Regardless, it’s still better than a landlord, at least you can vote out the board members.
I mean, they can just not form an HOA while still having people own their land.
Communities already do that. I live in one.
It can’t turn into an HOA, because that’s an entire legal process that current landowners need to agree to. Good luck getting people who already live somewhere to form an HOA by choice.
Lot rent is a massive scam and I feel bad for anyone stuck paying it.
Buying one’s home, but renting the land it is on never made sense to me. The land is the cheap part of the pair. Either rent both or buy both.
This is highly dependant on location. In cities it’s often the opposite.
The land is the cheap part of the pair.
This is so weird to read. The appraisal on my home valued the land at about 80% of the value and the actual structure the other 20%.
Mobile homes are very, very rarely in cities where land values are higher than the home values. If that is the case, it is an even crazier idea to own a mobile home on extremely expensive rented land.
It’s intentionally predatory. It doesn’t make sense, because it’s a trap you’re seeing after it already sprung on someone. John Oliver did a great episode on it
Marx was right.
That is almost no money and it’s gonna go poof. Too little too late for the mobile home parks the Christian college shuttered in Phoenix in lieu of dorms.
225 million is 225 million more than they have ever had, and it seems like there is an org, Roc USA, that is ready to work with that money to help people organize and take control of there own land.
Is it enough? Likely not. Will it do some good, maybe make traction on the issue so its better nationally funded in the future to help some of the poorest people in our nation? Most likely.
Yeah, no doubt. It’s just for a Christian nation we sure give shit all about the least of our people…or did Jesus relieve us of that burden.
